The Monica Ashley Case

As the project manager of “Project Hippocrates”, Monica had formal individual power which came from her position in HEAL-INC’s . She had legitimate power which was the formal authority to use company resources as well as its people to accomplish job-related tasks and duties. This power was granted by the president, Gary Dorr, when she accepted the position of project manager. She also had information power. As the project manager, Monica had access to and control over information including various reports and data supporting the idea of purchasing digital signal processor from an outside vendor. She also had more information about the changes of customers’ needs and competitors’ reaction to the changes. Her colleagues and subordinates therefore needed to depend on her to solve the problems they faced, which gave Monica the information power. However, Monica lacked reward power and coercive power, which were at the hand of the president Gary Dorr. Monica couldn’t give pay rises, promotion and other form of rewards to colleagues or subordinates who had done well in the project. More importantly, Monica didn’t have the power to punish the ones who hurt team morale and obstructed the progress of the project by engaging in organizational politics, such as Ralph Parker and Ed Kane. In addition, Monica also lacked informal individual power came from personal characteristics and relationship but not legitimate authority. Monica lacked expert power as she didn’t have the expertise in designing and manufacturing of signal processors before taking up the project. Moreover, she was relatively inexperienced when compared with Parker and she had neither made major contribution to the company nor built close relationship with her colleagues and subordinates. She lacked referent power as she was less respected by the others than Parker. On the contrary, Parker had high informal individual power including expert power and referent power because of his expertise in analog...

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Monica Ashley’s case is a very conclusive example of how the correct use of power and influence in management is as important as, and sometimes even more important than, having all the right answers and being able to back them up with data. MonicaAshley is a brilliant employee, and a very good Project Manager. She deserves a lot of credit for being able to complete the project, even though she has been removed towards the end. Her ability to concentrate on her work in a hostile environment is admirable. She is very well organized, passionate about her work and able to put the company’s well being above her own personal interests. She seems to understand better than everybody else in the company the need to complete the project in time in order to meet the customers’ changing expectations. She has irrefutable arguments to prove everything that she says. However, the fact that she completely ignores or misuses the sources of power available to her annihilates, in a way, the advantages obtained from her dedication and hard work. The project could have been completed in a much shorter time and with better consequences for her career if she had understood organizational politics and had taken advantage of all the sources of power available to her.
Monica thinks that because Gary Dorr has personally endorsed her to lead Project Hippocrates, she...

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At first Monica was not interested in leading Project Hippocrates, she intended on moving up in the ranks within her company. However, she was known for intensity and energy when working on a project and figured that she would throw herself at the project and perhaps after one more high-profile success she could move out of program/project management. Also, Monica believed that the President Gary Dorr wanted her to run the Hippocrates project and knew her as a go-getter, who would challenge anyone and analyze extensive data to back up her arguments. It seemed that the leadership she respected entrusted her with this project and she was not going to let them down.
Why was Monica driving so hard to meet her self-imposed deadlines?
Monica struggled to meet her deadlines because she believed that meeting those deadlines, and presenting factual data would be the way to win over leadership when it came down to making key decisions regarding the data that she was presenting. She wasted no time making political connections, instead focused all her energy on meeting deadlines to achieve the greater goal of garnering senior leadership buy-in behind her and her ideas.
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...do you think Monica was chosen to lead this project? What do you suppose were CEO Dorr’s reasons for recruiting Monica as project manager?
- Her work ethic
- Detailed approach
• What do you consider as the most important steps that Monica took, or failed to take, that resulted in her dismissal from the project?
- She didn’t deal with Parker directly
- She relied too much of the chummy chummy with dorr
- She didn’t act like a top exec
• What are the key lessons you can take from this situation about the challenge of driving change from the middle
- Act the part- Be senior managers; that is, be quiet and circumspect and don’t engage in direct confrontation.’- dan
- Data and relationships are the key to success
- act on bad behavior right away- use humor to difuse a situation
- take a long term view instead of fighting every battle
- its ok to delegate- good balance btwn micro managing and delegating
- monica should have slowed down and been objective
- ‘Listen; Remove the Urgency; Trust
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- set a date to bring products in the market
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...The Monica Ashey caseMonicaAshley was a bright employee at Health Equipment and Laboratories, Inc. (HEAL-INC), an advanced diagnostic and treatment equipment manufacturer. She was appointed manager of “Project Hippocrates” by Gary Dorr, the President of HEAL-INC. The purpose of this project was to shift from analog to digital electronics by purchasing digital components from an outside vendor. Since this was the industry trend, it would only be logical for all the divisions within the company to readily accept the project. Unfortunately for Monica, this was not the case.
Monica faced strong opposition by Ralph Parker, the VP for Signal Processing Design. Parker had three important sources of power: legitimate, expert and coercive. As VP of Signal Processing, Parker’s power was legitimate: it came from his VP position. In addition, Dorr once told Monica that “there was no way the company could do without Parker because of his signal processor contributions” (Cohen & Bradford, p. 58), which leads us to conclude that Parker had expert power. However, Parker resorted to his coercive power most of the time, causing unpleasant experiences for Monica in every single meeting: “he was nasty to her and made numerous accusations (...)” (p. 56). On the other hand, Monica’s most important source of power was referent power, which stemmed from her...

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MonicaAshley, a highly driven and ambitious woman was the project manager of “Project Hippocrates” at HEAL-INC. She had individual power to use the company’s resources and people to accomplish job related tasks and duties. She initially had concerns about taking on the position however, with the personal encouragement and backing by the president of the company, Gary Dorr, she accepted.
As the project manager, Monica had access and control over information such as reporting and data supporting the idea of purchasing a digital signal processor from an outside vendor. She also had information about the changes of customer needs and the competitor’s reactions to the changes. Therefore, her colleagues needed to depend on her to solve some of the...

...After many successful years at Heal-INC, Monica, a very ambitious woman known for her expertise, takes on “project Hippocrates” as a program manager. While working on the project with the same focus and energy she did with all her previous endeavors at the company, she mistakenly fell in a very individualistic role without paying attention to her peers knowing that Ralph parker, VP of signal Proc. Design, is “politically aggressive” and he could be a “major road block”. Monica used the same upward appeal influence tactics relying on her good relationship with the president of the company, Gary Dorr, as he once said to her “ he thought of her as HEAL-INC daughter”.
Monica had 3 sources of power: Expert, information and legitimate power. Expert and information power come from the several years of success at HEAL-INC and the continuous focus and dedication she put tackling project Hippocrates by “creating a task force”,” recruiting members from other departments” and “creating cross-department signal processor study group”. Her legitimate power comes from higher positions in the organizational chart since she “developed exceptional relationship with Gary Dorr, the current president of HEAL-INC”.
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Laura Ashley fashion and home furnishings are popular all over the world. The company has come a long way since Laura and Bernard Ashley started printing fabric on their kitchen table in London in 1953. The couple’s £10 investment for a screen, dyes and some linen was a humble start to the company. Twenty years later in the 1970s, its overall sales had grown to £300,000 through their shops in the UK and licensing operations as far afield as Australia, Canada, the US and Japan.
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Company: The MUI Group/ Laura Ashley
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Date due: 14 February 2014
Case:
Ashely Mervyn Coulston is known as the ‘Burwood triple murderer’ he murdered three innocent victims in cold blood on 29 July 19921. Coulston had gone to a Burwood house under the guise of renting a room in the house that had been ‘advertised in the Herald Sun’2. Coulston had a bag that contained a .22 rifle, ammunition, a homemade silencer and plastic cable ties. Coulston bound, gagged and covered the victim’s heads (using a towel or dressing gown) and shot each in the back of the head at point blank range3.
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In this case study I will examine the forensic evidence (limited to the main ballistic evidence), that was presented in the criminal trials and the forensic evidence that was introduced by the prosecution.
Background
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